From Foreign Policy Magazine:

In his classic essay Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell describes an experience he had as a colonial police officer in Burma. Under public pressure from a crowd of townspeople, he puts down an out-of-control elephant against his own wishes, describing it as the moment he “first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East.” As the people of the town debate the merits and legality of his actions, he wonders “whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.”

It’s tempting to wonder if any similarly penetrating insights or self-reflections have come to Spanish King Juan Carlos as he lies in the hospital, having injured his hip on an elephant shooting trip in Botswana that has ignited a firestorm of controversy.

In addition to being about the least politically correct way to spend your vacation (was the baby seal-clubbing junket all booked up?) the optics of this were pretty terrible at a time when more than half of young Spaniards are out of work and Spanish banks are facing yet another downgrade. Plus, it turns out that the king — who is Spain’s official head of state — didn’t inform the government that he was leaving the country and might have used public funds in the process.

Some leftist parties are calling for the king to abdicate or hold a referendum on returning to a republic. That doesn’t seem to likely at the moment, but the king may still want to stick to the beach next time if he doesnt want to join his country’s surging ranks of unemployed.

Letter to the librarian

You are the heart where arteries of knowledge congregate
The root that binds fibres of worldly wisdom
A rock where intellectual imbibers chisel and curve their creative granules
Bring me, the IPAD to connect to the universe

Bring the search engine to sieve juices of life
You are the nutrition of psyche.

Bring books from Tolstoy, DH Lawrence, Jon Donne, Maya Angelou
The poetic, the academic, the scholarly

Mr and Mrs Librarian where minds meet
Mrs and Mr Librarian my mental fodder
Mr and Mrs Librarian my intellectual drumstick

My soapstone for my wisdom sculptor
My oozing oasis for my PhD
My running river for my dissertation
My rich spring for my Communications assignment.

Your womb vomited, presidents, poets,
Ministers, medics, bishops, engineers, mothers
Your womb vomited our past, our today and our future

You are the inspiration that break with sun
To the world, let our guns and swords be books

Mr and Mrs Librarian, This is my letter to you

You are cemetery with live skulls of knowledge

Mbizo Chirasha aka The Black Poet

Life on campus were the days when one would wish they were at home in the care of mum and dad. Especially when one got sick. I remember my final year at university; I developed a sore throat and went to the university clinic. The nurse there was totally convinced without a benefit of a doubt that I had contracted a terrible flu. I was hoping she was going to give me a prescription but instead she advised; “eat three square meals a day, get plenty of rest and don’t drink alcohol.”

When I told my roommate, she was amazed and perplexed. She asked in astonishment, “which world is she living in, doesn’t she realize you’re at university?”

In his comments at a Pass Out Parade earlier this year, Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri expressed confidence that the Zimbabwe Republic Police was doing everything it could to bring road fatalities to a minimum in Zimbabwe.

When I heard the accident statistics for this past Easter weekend, I was shocked: 33 deaths and 332 serious injuries. Is this really the best we can do? Soberingly, on the same weekend last Easter, a total of 69 people died and 410 others were injured in road accidents, according to The Zimbabwean. So maybe, sadly, it is.

Tangentially, the whole Chihuri address is well worth a read – It’s like he’s living in some parallel universe.

Merit is angry. And after reading this I’m sure you will be too. Merit is a Kubatana subscriber who wanted to share this article with us:

This woman, one of thousands in Zimbabwe, is just another statistic at the Police station and in her neighbourhood, but to me she touched a nerve. That could be my sister, whose only mistake was marrying the love of her life, questioning him when he brought a second woman home and getting her body mutilated by an axe, getting her head chopped off and leaving three traumatized children behind (The Herald). This woman could have been my mother, who at the age of 62, a grandmother of 5 is chased away from the matrimonial home for a younger wife, but staunchly refuses to go. “This is my home” she vows, “I know no other home but this one. Where do you want me to go after 44 years of marriage?” This woman that I saw could easily have been me, for refusing to have unprotected sex with a cheating partner. A cheating partner who feels he is entitled to by body and my womanhood, and when I refuse, he beats me, kicks me with booted feet and as an insult to my womanhood, shoves an empty bottle of coca cola into my vagina, rupturing my uterus and thus successfully ensures I cannot have anymore children.

This is what I saw dear readers. Words fail me as I try to express the emotions and questions that went though my mind as I looked at this woman, who could have been anyone, including me. I reflect on the thousands of women ZWLA has interacted with, and the tears started flowing. I asked myself if we have done enough in our families, our organisations, our communities, our churches, our parliament, our country, to ensure that my daughter will not witness this, or become a victim.

This woman, whom I choose to call Tariro (Hope – for I am still hopeful), has 22 stitches below her right eye, three broken ribs, a ruptured uterus, broken jaw, stitches in her mouth, and various injuries on her arms and legs. Her husband, who had beaten her up and left her for dead, had done so breaching a standing protection order under the provisions of the Domestic Violence Act. And to add insult to injury, the police could not find him in order to arrest him.

What makes me angry is the fact that abusers are getting away with “community service”. The perpetrators are violating Protection Orders and getting away with it. The police….let me not say lest I commit a crime. My point though is, what really is being done to curb this menace called domestic violence? Back to my story, it had to take four hours, four determined women and an unwilling police officer to track down this murderous man and have him charged and arrested. My question is, what happens to women in different parts of the country, who do not have ZWLA to make enough noise to get their cases heard and justice delivered? Who is responsible for the safety and protection of the ordinary woman?

I am angry because I cannot do all that I want to. I am angry because when a woman is beaten up no one takes it seriously until it results in death, and by then it does not make a difference to her anymore. I am angry because there are not enough safe houses and resources allocated towards the safety of women. I am angry, so I sat down and wrote this, hoping it would cleanse my hurting spirit and I can stop crying and snapping at the people around me.

Does anyone honestly think a deputy minister can be bribed with 6,000 euros to write a  damning report about a fellow African diamond-producing country? Well, we know the alleged USD10 million bribe another African minister is accused of demanding from a diamond-producing company. Go figure.